I used to stay right in the woods for days when I was after a particular spring bird. One year it took 5 days and I got the one I was after, but like some fish I killed so long ago that turkey was dead and I was never the same.

I have a trophy I got for a brown trout back in 1973. It was the largest brown killed & registered in my part of Pennsylvania that year. It took almost ten years but I learned the 'history' of that particular strain of brown trout in that exact watershed. Why were they there, why did no one know about them? An old man (maybe 90 when he told me the story) unraveled the back story for me and I felt really bad for having taken that link out of the chain some 10 or 11 years prior.

By 1980 I was done taking trout unless I was on a back country trek somewhere in a wilderness area and then just a few for a meal. Even that didn't work out so well when the smells from my little cooking camp attracted a grizzly bear deep in the Gallatin National Forest...................... I think that was 1982 and I haven't taken any by intent since then. I've been hard on the salmon here; some years I took between 30 and 40 fish and we ate a lot of salmon but those days are over too. Last year I released all but one king salmon that was caught and still felt bad about the one killed. I'll get past that when we get some good numbers again but for now why would I kill one when I might be able to catch ten in the same day..................

Here's another thing to watch for as you get older; getting out of a small dome tent in the morning after a night on the riverside will be much more difficult

You are not alone buddy,

Ard

__________________Anywhere can be the land of great expectations, broken dreams, or paradise found, it's all up to you.